Late this past Thursday evening, Rousas John Rushdoony, founder and long-time president of the Chalcedon Foundation, was ushered into His Lord's presence after several months of rapidly declining health.
The Christian world has lost a giant.
I first encountered Rushdoony in what most consider his magnum opus, Institutes of Biblical Law. I was a young intellectual fundamentalist (yes, there are such people), pastor of a small Baptist church in the Midwest, and committed to a system of doctrine called dispensationalism. This theology taught, among other things, that the spiritual and moral conditions of the present world are destined to get worse and worse. The implications of this view had worked themselves deeply into my consciousness and ministry. As I read Rushdoony's Institutes, I recall thinking to myself, "I don't understand much of what this man is saying; but whatever it is, it surely is important." In time, Rushdoony's writings rekindled in me a vision of earthly victory (theologically called postmillennialism); and it reoriented my entire life.
Rushdoony gave me back my hope.
And he gave the Christian world much more.